I sit back on this myopic sports stuff and laugh. In the current climate of huge budget cuts, these presidents are thinking one thing: don't bother me with this minor part of the budget, just stop bleeding cash. What? You say. The TV networks want to corral the most profitable teams into 4 conferences? Good. How much they paying? $15 million per. Good. Then we don't have to subsidize you anymore. And if we don't get in, maybe all the bleeding and irrelevancy will eventually allow us to go the way of Hofstra and Boston U.!!
That's what the presidents are thinking. And I don't blame them. Bigtime sports aren't important enough for them to risk the health of their university. If someone else wants to subsidize their bigtime sports program, then they will be more than happy to let that happen. You can't go on year after year losing $20 million.
Dennis Dodd doesn't see this.
When it comes to buying a house, I'm sure he offered the owners double the market value. And when he sells his house, he offered it for 1/2 the market value. He certainly would be unique doing it. Not many people choose to make deals that "cheat" themselves. So is he saying every person in this world that has tried to get the most monies from their job, their savings, their investments are greedy? Or are they being prudent?
There is no way to define greed, because each and every one of us has different standards and different rationales for our self worth.
If we have a 1550 sq foot home we think the guy who has two homes of 5000 sq feet is greedy. But we don't look at the 80% to 90% of the people who live in shacks with less than 250 sq feet.
Personally I hate to see the BE being ripped apart. I'm not happy that an institution will make the decision based on relatively small gains relative to their overall finances. But I'm not privy to their budgets. They could be struggling and facing program cuts. I would support a move if this were the case. On the other hand if they took the extra monies created and increased their salaries, I would asked the boards to remove them. Thats just my opinion because that leadership would have crossed my line regarding fiduciary responsibility to an institution. That opinion is not based on some sort of higher moral values. It's just where I stand on these issues.